Review: TRUEMAN AND THE ARSONISTS, Roundhouse Studio Theatre

There’s no doubt that when Max Frisch’s The Fire Raisers premiered in 1956 the gloomy shadow of a World War would have loomed over it. The story is of a bourgeois businessman gleefully exploited by arsonists who slowly invade his home, but the identity of the titular pyromaniacs is left tantalisingly ambiguous. Are they Nazis proselytising fascism? Communists? Nihilists?

The real question is what a contemporary adaption tells us about humanity today. War still ravages and capitalists still exploit others for personal gain. Enter Simon Stephens’ contemporary adaption. Trueman and the Arsonists gives us a sparky update on Frisch’s classic but it never quite catches fire.

Grey morality is the core of the play. Trueman’s bourgeois ethics are hijacked by Smith and Molly who come knocking at his door initially wanting to shelter from the rain. He obliges them and they eventually set up camp in his attic all the whilst Trueman remaining blissfully ignorant of their true intentions. He is no innocent victim of course, having made his fortune based on a fraud.

The new adaption stratifies this core through a class lens. Trueman’s patronising chumminess with the East End-accented working-class arsonists blinds him to the absurd obviousness of their plans. “What is really in these barrels?” he half-jokingly inquires upon discovering explosives in his attic. In an absurd twist he even proffers them a match invoking the old Marxist line about capitalists selling the rope with which they are hanged.

But that class element feels oddly vapid when the writing wants to keep the arsonists cloaked in mystery. We are challenged to consider who they could be. Just Stop Oil? Terrorists? In wanting to remain ambiguous the production loses its propulsion. It needs more stable grounding to deliver the political provocation it seeks.

Helmed by a young cast, Abigail Graham’s production has its moments. Adam Owers’ Trueman hits the mark, a toff with slicked back hair flapping around like a flightless bird. His interactions with Smith, a charmingly cheeky-chappy Tommy Oldroyd with a cannonball-like shaved head, have a David Brent quality of awkward cringe. Angela Jones’ icy turn as Molly brings a chilling danger to their strange world slicing Trueman’s naiveté down to the ground with “the stark bollock naked truth” as she puts it.

But the casts’ interactions feel limited by a cluttered space and clunky set. A door, a table and eventually a smattering of bright blue barrels fill the intimate space of the Camden Roundhouse’s studio space right to the brim. There’s just enough room for the live band -cum-chorus dressed as firefighters with a punky Camden Town edge. They charge their production with needed voltage even if Chris Thorpe’s score feels like an afterthought rather than a concrete addition to the production.

Trueman and the Arsonists plays at the Roundhouse Studio Space until 8 November

Photo Credit: Harry Elleston

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